Mary Killen Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 30 December 2006

Etiquette advice from The Spectator's Miss Manners

issue 30 December 2006

Q. Six months ago an acquaintance asked me to lunch in the country, apparently to discuss some business she might be able to put my way. I don’t drive and the journey there and back was gruelling, involving taking a tube, then a train and then a mix-up over where we had agreed to rendezvous. The business proposition never materialised and lunch itself was a little trying. I accepted an offer from the highly energetic woman next to me (rather courageously clad in leather trousers) to go to a concert the following week. The event was pleasant enough and the lady appeared to know several people gathered in the foyer afterwards, so, having declined an offer of scrambled eggs in the outer suburbs where she resides, I thanked her and went home. I thought no more about it until yesterday when the original lunch hostess rang to reprimand me for my rudeness in neither thanking her for her lunch invitation, nor her friend for the musical evening.

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